Inner Workings: Literary Essays 2000-2005 by J. M. Coetzee, Derek Attridge (Introduction)

From the Publisher

A collection of essays on literature by one of the world’s finest writers.

Following on from Stranger Shores, which contained J.M. Coetzee’s essays from 1986 to 1999, Inner Workings gathers together his literary essays from 2000 to 2005.

Of the writers discussed in the first half of the book, several — Italo Svevo, Joseph Roth, Bruno Schulz, Sandor Marai — lived through the Austro-Hungarian fin-de-siècle and felt the influence of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Freud. Coetzee further explores the work of six of twentieth-century German literature’s greatest writers: Robert Musil, Robert Walser, Walter Benjamin (the Arcades Project), Joseph Roth, Gunter Grass, W.G. Sebald, and the poet Paul Celan, in his “wrestlings with the German language.”

There is an essay on Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock and on the short fiction of Samuel Beckett, a writer whom Coetzee has long admired. American literature is strongly represented by Walt Whitman through William Faulkner, Saul Bellow and Arthur Miller to Philip Roth. Coetzee rounds off the collection with essays on three fellow Nobel laureates: Nadine Gordimer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and V.S. Naipaul.

The New York Times - Walter Kirn

That Coetzee can make such exotic eminences as Sebald and Benjamin less forbidding is a testament to his prowess as an interpreter but also to his charm as a companion. His erudition and analytic acumen—both considerable, to say the least, and best displayed in his remarks on the nuances of literary translation—are so well dissolved into his elegant bearing that walking beside him rarely feels intimidating. And when, about halfway through the book, he leads us to the smoother ground of writers who compose in English and whom we've already presumably met (Faulkner, Beckett, Bellow, Roth and others), the stroll speeds up some and grows more invigorating…Inner Workings is Coetzee's master class, and he honors us, too, by letting us sit in on it, despite our spotty preparation and the hasty ways we may use it. Knowing something about W. G. Sebald feels a lot better than knowing nothing—particularly when the little knowledge one does have comes from a source as reliable as Coetzee and inspires one to make time to learn much more.

Rebecca Bollen Manalac - Library Journal

Written in Coetzee's (Disgrace) spare yet precise style, these essays cover a wide range of literature. His subjects, both European and American writers, range from Walt Whitman to Nadine Gordimer. Throughout, Coetzee demonstrates a comfortable grasp of the authors' body of work, their life and era, and other critical commentary surrounding their work. This command of his material blends well with the scrupulous rigor with which he examines the authors' meaning and intent. Coetzee's sage analysis is accompanied by concise plot summaries of relevant works, a useful feature for those unfamiliar with all the writings of the author in question. This collection would therefore be useful both to those studying the subjects of his essays and to those wishing for an introduction to the authors. Furthermore, as noted in Derek Attridge's (J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading) introduction, the essays allow oblique insights into Coetzee's own well-rewarded body of literature and will thus also be positively received by established followers of his fiction writing. Suited to academic and larger public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ3/15/07.]

Kirkus Reviews

Issues of political and moral choice and commitment and of literary theory and practice are considered in the South African Nobel laureate's fourth collection of criticism. Gathered here are 16 book reviews, four summary "introductions" to new translations or editions of major writers' works and a single celebration of a "classic" film ("Arthur Miller, The Misfits"), which appeared in the anthology Writers at the Movies. Coetzee's great strength is his sure sense of form-notably displayed in a meticulous deconstruction of Philip Roth's "dystopian" alternate-history novel The Plot Against America and a stringent explication of enfolded levels of irony and self-deception in Coetzee's countrywoman Nadine Gordimer's subtle political novel The Pickup. He also does his homework, assiduously. A wealth of painstakingly absorbed historical and biographical information enriches his dissections of scholar-critic Walter Benjamin's "the Arcades Project" (an encyclopedic analysis of Parisian social life "under capitalism"); Gunter Grass's challenging historical novel Crabwalk (based on a maritime disaster which has spawned numerous conflicting treatments of its details and significance); and the recently rediscovered fiction of 20th-century Hungarian author Sandor Marai, both a bold critic of fascism and a haughty apologist for an embattled aristocracy. Elsewhere, Coetzee pays due (if predictable) tribute to consensus European masters (Robert Musil, Paul Celan, Italo Svevo) and their less celebrated peers (Bruno Schulz, Joseph Roth, Hugo Claus), fellow Nobelists (Faulkner, Bellow, Naipaul), the underrated (Swiss miniaturist Robert Walser) and the unclassifiable (eclectic memoirist W.G. Sebald). Evenmiddling essays on Whitman, Beckett and Graham Greene are redeemed by startlingly precise insights (e.g., that Greene's "entertainment" Brighton Rock is energized by distinctions drawn between Good and Evil and Right and Wrong). Dare we suggest that Coetzee is actually a better critical essayist than a novelist? This trenchant, rewarding volume suggests it just may be so.

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